Redmond (WA) ā€“ Here we go again. It appears that there is little good news about Windows Vista these days and Microsoft is not doing much to correct the doubt about Vista impressions that exist today. Market research firm Forrester apparently found that only 8.8% of corporations are using Windows Vista today, while 87% still use Windows XP. He went as far as describing Vista as a product that was rejected by customers and as a flop that may force Microsoft to revert its strategy. No surprise, Microsoft is unhappy.

According to Microsoftā€™s Chris Flores, who not necessarily disagrees with the claim that the adoption rate of Windows Vista is low, claims that Forresterā€™s Thomas Mendel lacks common knowledge about software upgrade cycles in the industry and simply ā€œskimsā€¯ over ā€œcommon knowledgeā€¯.

Combining the answers from 50,000 businesses, Mendel found that fewer than one in 11 of PCs being used in big firms runs Vista. More than 87% were still running Windows XP at the end of last month. Considering the fact that Vista has been on the market for 18 months (21 months if you count in the Express upgrade period) and has been available to large-scale beta-testing even longer, the fact that only 8.8% of businesses run Vista may raise doubts over the benefits the operating system offers to businesses. Read the rest of this entry »

First Look - Product announcements are always tricky in a the way how you describe a products features in a flashy enough way to attract attention, but remain sufficiently careful to not overstate its features and benefits. Even a fantastic new product can easily be trashed in todayā€™s Internet world if you go overboard: That may be the case with Cuil, an interesting new try to come up with a new type of search engine, which, according to its developers, carries the worldā€™s largest search index. We have 12 hours of Cuil usage behind us to see what the engine offers. The result (surprise, surprise): Bigger isnā€™t necessarily better.

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